


Winter

by wickersnap



Series: dbh rarepairs week [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/F, Freedom Fighters, Prompt Fic, Servants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 08:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20636507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap
Summary: The moon is but a waning crescent on the night they meet. The thief, the fool that climbs to her window.They are the Others, they have no rights or person hood. But they are people. They will be.It is what she knows North is fighting for.





	Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Day 6 of dbh rarepairs week, fantasy!  
More of a mediaeval setting than high fantasy or anything, where androids are advanced or evolved humans.  
Surprise surprise, Kamski is no king.  
Enjoy!

The castle is cold, even during the day. Even during the heights of summer, the greystone walls wick away the heat into the void. Chloe could be happily wandering the gardens after her master one minute, only to reach for her shawl as soon as they cross back through the proud fortress gates. The courtyards, even, in the shadows of the tallest towers, cannot escape the chill.

Of late, there’s been unrest in the kingdom. Small groups of Others have gathered, having risen up against their masters. Of course, with incredible intellect, strength, and endurance, the normal citizens stand not a chance. The reason, of course, for the system in origin. 

To keep the Others in their place.

Chloe gazes from Elijah Kamski’s window, on standby while he sleeps. She can understand the motives behind the movement, of course, but has no interest in joining. After all, her job is a kind one; her master looks after her, feeds her, and never abuses his power. In her own right, Chloe is a person first and foremost to him. She bets that if she were to ask him, in the appropriate manner, to walk free… He might let her.

Chloe knows she is a caged bird. She is self aware. One of the first discovered Others, hence her position in the castle. She’s revered as a scientific enigma, and the humans worship her master for harnessing her power. As reward for his services to the kingdom, Kamski is one of the royal advisories living in luxury behind the pale-washed fortress walls. 

But the winters are harsh, even in the nicest of personal quarters. 

Through the kingdom drifts waves of gently falling snow, dancing with the fingers of the wind. Rooftops shimmer with ice and powdery banks under the waning half-moon. Leafless trees shiver with the chill.

Somewhere below her, Chloe hears movement. She unlatches the window pane and leans forward, gazing down to the lower ramparts. The last of presumably several cloaked figures darts out of view around the side of the tower.

_ “Shit!” _

It’s a hissed mutter from below, a voice she doesn’t recognise. Chloe can hear every rustle, every breath that Elijah takes; he has not woken yet.

She thinks she sees the edge of a cloak sway around the corner of the tower, but in the frigid darkness, it’s possible that it is merely her imagination. After all, there is no one she can think of who would dare to scale a sheer stone wall.

Contrary to all rational belief, a hand stretches around the side, fingers gripping, desperately, at the cracks between the slabs. Slender, pale and nimble. 

The fool slips around the corner to follow their hands, and looks up. Her hood has fallen back to her shoulders, and her gaze finds Chloe’s immediately. A woman, young and with determined façade.

“You’ll fall,” Chloe tells her quietly.

“I shan’t,” she replies with unfounded certainty. She gazes at Chloe a moment longer before making her way over. Chloe can not help but admire her agility.

“You’re  _ her, _ aren’t you? The first?” The fool asks, finally looping her arms over the sill. Her fingertips look red and painful. She leans forwards, and Chloe leans back.

“Come with us,” she whispers. “We’re your people. We can set you free, and you’ll bring hope to the whole kingdom!”

“I will not go,” Chloe refuses. “My place is here. My master needs me.”

“Your master cares for you not. To him you are but a useful tool to do his bidding.”

Elijah turns over in his sleep, and quickly settles again.

“I will not,” Chloe repeats, though cannot bring herself to walk away, to re-latch the window.

The fool sighs. 

“I shall come again,” she says. “You’ll see.”

She disappears over the windowsill. Chloe leans forward to watch her go.

Once out of view she wonders how hardy her group must be to brave scaling the kingdom walls themselves. Against rhyme and reason, her thoughts linger on the safety of such an ambition, hoping irrationally for the stranger to live to fulfill her promise.

Elijah’s snores echo, lonely, in his chamber. Chloe latches the window when the next breath of wind chills her to the core.

Two moons thereafter, she is not disappointed. 

Once again at the same bay, a scuffling makes itself known against the stonework. Chloe tip-toes quickly over, drawing the blue velvet curtains behind her.

“You should not have returned,” she tells the fool beneath the cross-hatched panes.

“I couldn’t well leave you! Did I not say I would come?” The fool grins. 

Chloe frowns. “What’s so amusing?” 

“This feels terribly clandestine,” she replies. “Are you sure you should be associating with me?”

“Not at all.”

“Come with us, then,” she campaigns. “Join the right side.”

“I shall not,” Chloe insists. 

“What is there for you here, ’sides work and bigotry?”

“It is my life, and I am content. They treat me well here, I have no reason to leave.”

The fool studies her face for moments. The snow has ceased, but her fingers look as sore and bruised as before. Her hair is tied in an attractive loose braid over her shoulder.

“You shall see,” she says. “One day.”

Chloe blinks. 

“You are so certain of it.”

“My name is North,” the fool offers, en lieu of an answer.

“North,” Chloe repeats. “May the winds bless your journey.”

“May we meet again.” North winks and disappears once again.

The room is glacial when Chloe snaps out of her daze and closes the window. She has been slow as of late. Maybe it is time for her to sleep again. 

She crosses the chamber and steps into her rarely-used room, no more spacious than a broom cupboard. It needn’t be, when she comes to use it maybe once every half lunar cycle. She slips beneath the covers that scratch and catch on her calluses. The mattress is hard and cold and does not give beneath her. Awake she lies for hours, thoughts drifting to the foolhardy sneaking around the castle somewhere below.

Chloe wakes up cold, and gets to work. It is not a problem—she has never been bothered by it before. 

The night the fool returns next is the night of the new moon. 

Chloe sits at the writing desk, organising Elijah’s scattered, torn and tossed documents.  _ Tap, tap, tap  _ on the glass pane, and she’s up like a shot. She draws the curtains, placing her lantern on the sill, and pushes open the window.

“Will I get your name this time?” North asks. In the firelight her hair burns like autumn, her cheeks brushed with gold.

“I won’t go with you,” Chloe says. “Why do you try?”

“Because I believe,” North answers.

“You believe in your cause?”   
“Of course. I believe in my friends, and I believe in my fellow resistance. But I believe in  _ you _ .”

Chloe’s fingers skim the stone of the sill meeting the window sash.

“Why?”

North smiles, flickering halcyon in unsteady lamplight. 

“Instinct.”

Chloe feels as if the world has narrowed to just her and North, crouched in this alcove, backlit by a midnight of nothingness. North’s hand, frostbitten where her gloves do not cover, meets hers at the edge of the wooden sash. She traces the silhouettes of Chloe’s fingers, the calluses at her knuckles and finger pads.

“Leave with me,” she whispers. 

Her gaze, as intense as it is, has no right being so soft. Chloe’s voice has left her. 

“I can’t,” she rasps, snatching her hand back to her chest and cradling it there. Ice-cold trails still skate over her skin in the wake of North’s explorations. 

Behind them comes a rustling of sheets. North grips the sash and leans forward, inches from Chloe’s face. 

“Believe in yourself,” she says urgently. “You are more than they say you are. You are a person.”

Chloe hears Elijah’s feet fall on the stone floors. North winks, reaching out to brush her arm so briefly she can barely believe she didn’t imagine it, and disappears. 

Hurriedly, Chloe re-latches the window as quietly as possible.

“Chloe?” Elijah asks.

Chloe peeks around the curtain. “Sir?”

“…What are you doing there? Did I hear you talking to someone?”

“No, Sir, of course not… I was merely taking a short pause to see from the window.”

He nods, and takes a step closer. Chloe steps around the curtain, leaving it closed behind her in hopes that the chill won’t escape.

“Why are you so cold?” He asks anyway.

“I…” Chloe wrings her hands gently. “I must have become distracted. The view is fascinating.”

He scrutinises her in the way that he does that makes one feel like he can see right through them. Maybe he can.

“If you say so,” he says finally. “Quickly finish so we may be ready for the morning. I have many meetings before this plan will go through.”

“Of course, Sir,” Chloe acquiesces, and gets to work.

Near a quarter lunar cycle passes. North returns to the window thrice. 

“I cannot go,” she tells her on the third night. “I cannot leave this place.”

North tilts her head in sympathy, hand sneaking up to stroke Chloe’s cheek.

“What ties you here?” She asks, and Chloe struggles.

“I do not know. It feels like all I have ever been made to do. I owe my life to him.”

“You would not do so for me, if not the cause?”

“I cannot,” she whispers, hoarse. Her nails dig into her palms, marking them with small white crescents to mirror the waxing moon above.

North sighs. “We are getting ready to move, I must be cautious. I will come back for you; on that I give you my word.”

In a moment of rash weakness, Chloe takes North swiftly by her cloak and pulls her forward to press lips to her cheek.

“You fascinate me,” she says. “Stay safe.”

North, unbalanced on numb toes, takes hold of Chloe’s shoulder to right herself, holding in a gasp.

“My apologies—” Chloe begins, but is cut off by North’s own lips. She kisses her for only the most fleeting of moments, and is gone, but not without one last glance over shoulder.

Chloe rocks back on her feet, finding need of the walls to anchor herself.

… 

“Please, I need you. I can think of nothing but you, up here alone. I don’t even know your name.”

North has slipped up to Elijah’s window yet again, little more than a few days before the next full moon. Somehow, their meeting cries of unspoken finality. Tension sparks in the air and hangs, strung thickly between the two of them.

“I…” Chloe chokes, clinging to the curtains for dear life. North pulls herself through the window fully, crouching on the inside of the sill with one leg dangling toward the flagstones. 

“My name is Chloe,” Chloe says. “My name is Chloe.”

“Chloe…” North grins, winding her fingers through those of Chloe’s half-clenched fist. 

She tugs until Chloe lets her pull her hand to her lips, and then kisses each of her knuckles.

“Will you run away with me, Chloe?” She begs. “We can go anywhere.”

“Chloe,” says Elijah’s deep voice from behind her. 

She spins on her heel in a panic, backing into North’s arms.

“Kamski, Sir, I—”

“ _ Go, _ ” he instructs. He looks neither resigned nor upset, merely expectant. “You have not the time to dilly dally about.”

“What do you speak of?” North demands.

Elijah flicks his gaze from Chloe to her and back. 

“They will raid your camps at dawn. I can only do so much from here.”

“Sir…” 

“Go, Chloe. You must leave now.” He turns to retrieve his heavy cloak slung over the nearby stand, offering it to her.

North squeezes her hand and lets go, snatching the cloak from Elijah and flicking it expertly over Chloe’s shoulders. With numb fingers, Chloe fastens it, still staring at her master in shock.

“I shall indeed miss you, my dear. Do be safe.”

She nods, mutely.

“Chloe, we must go.”

“Yes, I… I’m coming.” 

Chloe takes North’s proffered hand and clambers onto the sill.

“Farewell,” she tells Elijah solemnly, stepping backwards through the window.

“Farewell,” he replies, before he disappears from her view.

North helps her onto the wall and down. She follows every step, every handhold, until they reach the ramparts. North catches her in her arms when she drops the last half metre.

“Thank you,” she breathes, spinning her around.

“No,” Chloe says, “thank  _ you, _ North.”

North takes her wrist in one hand and her cheek in the other.

“I feel like we may have gone about this backwards, but may I kiss you?”

“Of course,” Chloe smiles, and leans, wonderfully, into her touch. The kiss, like the first, lasts mere moments.

“We must move quickly,” North whispers in her ear. “We can be home before daybreak, but then we must move our people somewhere safe.”

“Elijah will think of something,” Chloe says. “I trust him.”

“And I trust you,” North agrees. 

“Let us go. We have a long night ahead.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
[tumblr](silverxsakura.tumblr.com)


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